Te Kakau (Orion's Belt)
by slaughterliterary
Summary: SEQUEL to "Whare Potae." Moana's search for Maui is interrupted when a terrible illness begins sweeping the islands, forcing her to seek out the help of heavenly gods and monsters in her quest both to find a cure, and to bring her favorite former demigod home.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** This story is the direct sequel to a Moana fic I wrote called **Whare Potae.** If you haven't read that story yet, this one may not make a lot of sense, so I strongly encourage you to please go and look up that story before you read this one.

I am writing this chapter from the road to New York City, which is rather bumpy, thus making it difficult to type. I'd like to do a little work, though, so I'll give it a try.

Oh, and I have a rather presumptuous request for you all, please; several of you have left me comments or sent me messages indicating that you've been inspired to draw Moana fanart after reading my story. I can't begin to tell you how deeply that touches me. If you have drawn a piece of fanart based around this story, I would be so honored if you would message me and show me your work. I would love to display it or link it on my website for the world to see (with proper credit and a link to your page, of course) if you'd be willing to share. I have one that I'm saving up to show you in the next chapter, but I can't post it from the road. Stay tuned!

I took a look at my inbox before I headed out today, and I can see that I have several messages from you that I haven't answered yet. I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long. If you've been waiting for a reply, thank you so much for your patience, and I look forward to being in touch with you very soon, probably on Monday, when I'm back from New York.

Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy the story.

* * *

 **Te Kakau**

Orion's Belt

By Mercy Slaughter

* * *

 **Prologue**

Three weeks after her twenty-first birthday, Moana sailed her favorite canoe back to Motunui, and moored it on the beach just as the sun was beginning to rise again on the horizon. She was bedraggled, exhausted, hungry, and disappointed, and she dragged herself up the beach and crawled into her bed without stopping to speak to anyone.

She'd spent the last several days traveling in a circuit around the local islands, but to no avail. It was the second trip of the kind that she'd taken in the past several weeks, but no matter where she looked or what new tactics she tried, she couldn't find Maui or even figure out where he'd gone. He hadn't been on the island where he'd left his mark years before, and he hadn't been laying low in any of the nearby villages. Moana had eventually been forced to accept that, when he'd decided that a little romantic disappointment was a good enough reason never to come back to Motunui, he must have found or made a boat of his own, somewhere, and had probably set sail for foreign lands.

At this point, she didn't even know where to begin looking.

If I'd left right away, she reminded herself angrily, if I'd gone after him as soon as he'd left, maybe I could have headed him off. Now, I'll probably never find him…unless he decides to come home.

After almost a month, she didn't have much faith in the idea that he was going to just get over his annoyance and come back, the way she'd thought he would at first. She'd misjudged him, and now it was probably too late.

Moana sighed, then shivered, gritted her teeth, and rolled over on her mat. It was strangely cold and unusually quiet in the house, and her parents hadn't been waiting for her when she got home, as she'd been sure they would. No matter how she begged them to remember that she was an adult, now, and fully capable of handling herself on a sea voyage, they were nevertheless always sitting up and watching for her when she came home, relieved that she hadn't been drowned, or eaten by a sea monster, or both.

This time, though, there wasn't a sign of them. Now that she thought about it, Moana had a bad feeling about that.

They don't really get much time to spend together these days, she thought, realizing guiltily that, whenever she went off adventuring or in search of gods and monsters, her parents had to run the village in her stead. Maybe they're having a date night. That'd be nice.

Still, it was awfully late, she reminded herself, and even if they'd been out walking in the woods or sitting down by the beach together, they'd probably have been home by now.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Moana got to her feet and was surprised at how dizzy she felt the moment she stood up. The world swam, and she had to grab on to the side of the bed to steady herself for a few seconds before her head cleared.

"Mom? Dad?" She walked through the house, calling out to her parents, but no one answered. She hesitated in the doorway, t hen stepped outside and around to the back of the house, where the earth-oven stood adn where the match were laid down for mealtimes.

It was pitch-black outside, and Moana's eyes had to adjust to the darkness before she found her father, lying on his back across two of the mats, his eyes wide-open and staring straight up. His breathing was coming in abrupt gasps and starts, jerking his chest up and down as the breaths struggled in and out, and his one hand resting on the bedcover was shaking.

"Dad?!" Moana hurried to him, kneeling down beside him and reaching for his hand, which didn't respond as she touched it. "Dad, are you okay? What's wrong?"

Turning his head to look at her, former Chief Tui of Motunui opened his mouth slowly to speak, and haltingly tried to croak out her name.

"Mo…"

Moana frantically pressed her hand to his head, and his forehead felt like it was on fire.

"I'll get you some water," she told him, doing her best to stay calm. "Just, um, stay right there, okay? I'll be right back."

Scrambling to her feet, she headed for the well, but was stopped halfway there by the sight of her mother and the Tohunga running full-tilt across the village square.

"Mom!" Moana hurried to join her. "Mom, it's Dad. He's-!"

"Oh, Moana, thank heavens you're back," gasped Sina, grabbing her daughter and giving her a quick, fierce hug. "Yes, I know. Your father's been sick since yesterday, but it only just took a turn for the worse…but it's all right. I've brought Maata, now, and she'll know what to do. Go and help her with anything she needs, Moana. I'll get the water. Go, quickly!"

Maata, the Tohunga, gave Moana a tight-lipped little smile of greeting, and then both of them started for Moana's house while Mom stopped to draw water from the well.

Moana and Maata had only taken a few steps, however, before there was an anguished man's scream from somewhere across the village, and then Rangi came racing out of his house with his mother Whetu trailing behind him.

"Chief," he barked, noticing Moana and heading straight for her. "Moana…Anahera's dead." His face was drawn and his eyes looked raw, but he was obviously doing everything in his power to act as though he hadn't just been crying.

The Tohunga sighed, lowered her eyes, and shook her head.

"Poor Anahera," whispered Mom, wrapping a gentle arm around Whetu, who was silent and looked slightly shocked.

"She was in terrible pain," whispered Whetu helplessly. "It's been days since she took ill…at the end, she couldn't eat, couldn't speak, until death was a mercy. At least, now, she has some peace to look forward to."

Whetu gave Moana a pleading look, begging for some kind of confirmation, and Moana nodded.

"Rarohenga is a beautiful place," Moana assured her. "I'm sure she'll be happier there than she was on earth."

Whetu sniffled, and then managed a rueful little laugh.

"It wouldn't be hard," she sighed. "Our Anahera wasn't much of a ray of sunshine on earth, now was she? She could only get happier, I suppose."

"May she be at peace," whispered Moana doing her best to be a good, considerate Chief, even if the face of her own rising panic. She gave Whetu an encouragingly little pat on the shoulder, flashed her a fleeting smile of sympathy, and then grabbed Tohunga Maata by the wrist, pulling her bodily towards her own house where her father lay clinging to life.

Her heart was beating desperately in her chest, and her own lungs were suddenly aching and burning, probably from the exertion of the long voyage, but Moana didn't have time to pay attention to that, or to care.

Motunui was cold and dark, but no longer silent. All over the villages, people were beginning to cry out from inside their homes.

A merciless shiver ran down Moana's spine and shook her to the bone as she and the Tohunga burst through the door of her father's bedroom, where he now lay entirely still, only the faint rise and fall of his chest indicating life.

* * *

 **Author's End Note:** I did promise you some angst, didn't I? I'm afraid this one starts out in rather a dark place, but I promise that we'll have some levity, too; it won't be all consistent gloom and doom, don't worry.

I am still on the way to New York, and it's snowing. I may be on the road a while longer…


	2. Chapter One

**Author's Note:** It was a lovely service. I attended with my parents and my brother, Noah, who we picked up from Providence. The Slaughter family is actually a rather large family, but I haven't been in touch with many of them in years and years; you can imagine that I'm just a little bit of a black sheep, but we all got along pleasantly in honor of the occasion.

My grandfather, Jack Slaughter, with whom I had been very close, growing up, hasn't been able to walk in months. He's 94, confined to a wheelchair, and he goes in and out, cognitively. He was a devoted, loving husband to my grandmother for sixty-three years, but last night he couldn't remember her at all.

This morning, however, when we arrived at the gravesite, my uncle reminded my grandfather that we were here today to celebrate my grandmother's life. My grandfather listened, nodded, then opened the car door, stood up, climbed out of the car and started trying to walk to the grave. My father had to half-tackle, half-cajole his father back into the wheelchair so that Grandpa wouldn't hurt himself.

It was something of a miracle; perhaps a true demonstration of the power of the human spirit.

With that, I give you Chapter One.

* * *

 **Chapter One**

Not far away, Maui of the wind and sea skidded to a stop in his hawk form, landing shakily atop the great uninhabited, rocky landmass of Motuikaokao, out in the middle of the ocean. Tucking himself beneath the overhanging ledge that had served thus far as a shelter from the elements, he shuddered, raised the fish hook in his beak, and transformed back into a human.

The sun was just coming up, but it wasn't doing anything to warm Maui's perch. He felt frozen from head to toe, and he tucked his arms and legs up against his chest, wrapping his crudely-made sleeping mat around his shoulders to try and stave off the cold.

His head was spinning, and his throat felt painfully dry. Swallowing hard to no avail, he scooted himself around into a position where he could lay back on the rock and let the sun beat down onto his face, shutting his eyes against the glare and willing the dizziness to leave him alone.

Maui couldn't remember the last time he'd been this sick. It had happened, of course, once or twice. Every now and then, if he'd eaten something he shouldn't have, or maybe if he'd eaten too much of anything, his mortal side would assert itself and make him painfully aware of how fragile and unpleasant a half-human life could be while he heaved the bad meal out into the ocean. A little food poisoning, of course, horrible as it might have felt at the time, was never life-threatening.

This, on the other hand, was different. This, he suspected, was a lot closer than he'd ever been before to understanding what it meant to really be "human." He felt like his lungs, his head, even his very skin were at war with him, and what was worse was that they were winning. He was too uncomfortable to sleep, and swallowing hurt too much for food to be appealing.

It wasn't clear where the illness had come from, but whatever it was, it was _bad._ Maui had to hand it to the mortals; if they had to put up with stuff like this on a regular basis, then they were made of much sterner stuff than even he had ever realized.

 _So,_ he thought, trying to focus on breathing through and despite the pain in his chest. _What do we think, is this it? If I'm really gonna die here on this big empty rock, maybe I'd have been better off sticking with Hine-nui-te-po after all. Could have been prince consort f the underworld, instead of sun-baked remains of Maui the mortal. Nobody's likely to even find me out here. Nobody'll know what happened to me; they'll have to make it up. Come to think of it, it might work out better that way. I hope they make it good. Let me go out in a blaze of glory, sacrificing myself to save a village, or something; I'm not picky, really. Anything's gotta be better than this._

Behind Maui's eyelids, a shadow suddenly passed over the sun, and then the light returned, but harsher, this time. Startled, Maui opened his eyes abruptly to see the huge form of someone or something standing over him.

It looked, at first glance, like a man made of nothing but stars, which was a difficult thing to comprehend in the middle of the morning sunshine. The creature's entire body seemed to be made of tiny, white-hot, blazing pinpoints of light, and they gave off a warmth that trickled in through Maui's bones and heated his core, providing a relief that the sun, apparently, could not.

"Maui," boomed the star-man.

 _Oh, great,_ thought Maui. _Now I'm seeing things. Yup, this is the end, all right. I'm toast. Hah, how am I supposed to not 'go towards the light' if the light is coming for me?_

"Maui of the wind and sea," repeated the star-man, leaning in so that his lights shone even more brightly and intensely, forcing Maui to squint.

"Go away," mumbled Maui. "I'm dying."

"I…noticed," declared the star-man. "Do you not know me?"

Maui raised an eyebrow, which proved too painful an expression to maintain.

"Uh….no? Is this a guessing game? Because, and I don't want to be a party pooper, but I'm not really in the mood. Ugh."

The star-man just sighed and shook his glittering head.

"Wait, don't tell me you're my conscience," Maui rasped, trying and almost managing a sarcastic grimace. "If you're about to remind me about all the amends I need to make in the next life, then I've got news for you. You're about three weeks too late. This _is_ my amends…uh, I think."

"Indeed," murmured the star-man.

"Good" Maui tried shifting onto his side to avoid the glare from the blinding lights, but found that moving too much was unmanageable. "Glad we agree. Now, if you don't mind, unless you've got some good news for me, conscience, I'd rather-!"

"Here." The star-man laid something down beside Maui's head. "Eat this."

"Not," mumbled Maui, "hungry."

"Eat," insisted the star-man, a bit more forcefully than he'd spoken thus far. "You are sick with a disease that I have seen spreading for days across the surrounding islands. There is no hope but this; it will heal you, make you whole again. Eat."

Turning his head ever so slightly, Maui managed to see the bowl lying beside him. It was full of something that looked like fruit, although, in his delirious state, he couldn't identify what kind of fruit it was. Upon further inspection, it certainly didn't look like any fruit he'd ever seen before. The pieces were shaped sort of like stars, only somehow round, with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny points, even though, of course, that was impossible. There was no fruit on earth that grew like that. There was something wrong with the color, too; they were too bright, too clear, with no blemishes or bruises anywhere that Maui could see.

Maui glared at the fruit.

"Why?" Suspiciously, he tried looking back up at the star-man. "You say this is some kind of…what, some kind of miracle cure? So, why give it to me? What have I done to deserve a miracle?"

The star-man only shook his head.

"Are you sure," repeated the star-man, "that you do not know me?"

Maui winced. All this talking was making his throat burn like hell.

"Y-yeah," he managed, snorting his best attempt at a laugh. "Yeah, pretty sure I'd have remembered something like, uh, you. Why, you got a name? Might…jog my memory."

The star-man only sighed again, then turned, and…disappeared, as though he'd never been there at all. The bright lights faded away, until Maui was lying, again, on the rock ledge, chilly and shivering in the harsh sunlight that was now beating directly on his face.

The bowl of insane-looking fruit, however, was still there. Maui reached out with a hand and felt it, then carefully picked up a piece of fruit, and was relieved to find that the points on the star-shaped things didn't turn out to be prickles or thorns of any kind.

Light-headed, aching, and aware that there was very little left that he could lose, Maui shrugged, maneuvered the fruit to his mouth, and took a large bite.

Unexpectedly, the juices were hot in his mouth, and they burned his throat as he hastily swallowed the bite down, coughing, spluttering and wincing with the effort and pain.

For a moment after choking down the fruit, he lay there gasping and sucking in gulps of cold air to combat the searing sensation, feeling like he'd somehow just swallowed the sun. Then, just as he was wondering what the heck that had all been about, and if the star-man had actually been some death-wish manifestation, rather than anything like a conscience, his head began to clear.

It happened gradually; a soft, cooling sensation that began in his temples and washed gently down through his shoulders, arms, torso and legs, coating him in calm and healing the desperate aches, shivers, dizziness and burning pains that filled and tormented him. He lay there on the rock with his head back and his eyes closed, basking in the amazing current of relief that came as the sickness ceased, ad when he finally sat up, minutes later, he could see clearly again without any kind of delirium.

It was then that he realized that the sky had gone dark again, and that the sun was gone. The moon was out, and so were a few brave stars, twinkling down at him from a safe, un-blinding distance, reminding him of the basket of fruit at his side, and of the strange creature who had, quite possibly saved his life.

 _How long have I been lying here?_ Maui was startled. He'd had very little sense of any time passing as whatever he'd eaten had purged the sickness from his body, but somehow, in the matter of a few minutes for him, the day had managed to turn into night. He looked over, discovered that he still had the bowl of fruit, and sighed.

 _Okay, then,_ he thought. _So, probably not a dream. Great. Well…thanks, shiny man, whoever you are. You did me a solid. If I knew where to find you, or even what the heck you are, I'd owe you one._

Whoever it was had asked him several times, "do you know me?" Maui wasn't sure what that had been all about. He was sure, absolutely positive, that he didn't know that person, that he'd never known that person. Maybe this had all been some kind of mistake in Maui's favor. Maybe that star-man had really been looking for someone else, trying to save someone else's life, and Maui had just borne a convenient resemblance to one of star-man's relatives, or something.

There had been something else, too, that star-man had said, but Maui was exhausted after the painful ordeal of almost dying…again. Whatever comment of star-man's was itching at the back of Maui's mind, it could wait until morning, couldn't it?

Maui shut his eyes, laid his head down, and tried to will himself to drift off to sleep, but his brain wouldn't let him rest. There was something _really important,_ it was telling him, something that _he absolutely needed to remember,_ right now, even if the pain-soaked memories of the star-man's visit were still a little fuzzy.

Sitting up again, he grumbled to himself, stretched, and was pleased when he found he could do all those things without his muscles or his throat feeling like fire.

It was about the illness, he decided after a moment's clear-headed thought. Star-man had said something about the sickness. It hadn't been food poisoning, after all, it had been…

"'…a disease that I have seen spreading for days across the surrounding islands," he repeated aloud, recalling, with some effort, exactly what the star-man had said. "'There is no hope but this; it will heal you, make you whole again.' Oh. Uh, that's…that's not good."

Across the water, the island of Motunui was a dark-green, peaceful, moonlit mass, it's people having probably already tucked themselves into their houses for the night.

Maui gazed at it for a long moment, trying to fend off a few particularly uncomfortable memories. Then, he sighed, took a deep breath, and hunted and began hunting around the ledge for his hook.

* * *

 **Author's End Note:** We've made it to Delaware, but typing in this car is difficult. Please forgive me for the typos and errors; I promise to correct them as soon as I possibly can. Writing is making this trip go so much faster for me.


End file.
